Thursday, 5 May 2011

What I occupy myself with when I have a day off work.

Kleerup ft. Lykke Li- Until we bleed.
I love Lykke Li, and I'm not sure why I've never paid more attention to this song before. But I've been listening to it on repeat, and I love it!

And on another note, I came across this extract from an article. It's hit on a few points that I feel strongly about;

As girls come of age sexually, the culture gives them impossibly contradictory messages…. Somehow girls are supposed to be innocent and seductive, virginal and experienced, all at the same time. As they quickly learn, this is tricky. Females have long been divided into virgins and whores, of course. What is new is that girls are now supposed to embody both within themselves. This is symbolic of the central contradiction of the culture—we must work hard and produce and achieve success and yet, at the same time, we are encouraged to live impulsively, spend a lot of money, and be constantly and immediately gratified. This tension is reflected in our attitudes toward many things, including sex and eating. Girls are promised fulfillment both through being thin and through eating rich foods, just as they are promised fulfillment through being innocent and virginal and through wild and impulsive sex…. The emphasis for girls and women is always on being desirable, not on experiencing desire…. advertisers can’t conceive of a kind of power that isn’t manipulative and exploitive or a way that women can be actively sexual without being like traditional men…. A young woman seems to have only two choices: She can bury her sexual self, be a ‘good girl,’ give in to what Carol Gilligan terms ‘the tyranny of nice and kind’ (and numb the pain by overeating or starving or cutting herself or drinking heavily). Or she can become a rebel—flaunt her sexuality, seduce inappropriate partners, smoke, drink flamboyantly, use other drugs. Both of these responses are self-destructive, but they begin as an attempt to survive, not to self-destruct.

- Jean Kilbourne, “The More You Subtract, the More You Add”:

For the full article go Here.
It's definitely worth spending the time reading it.

It's quite horrible when you spend the time thinking about how much effect and control the media has. It's easy to shove it out of your mind, but after studying the effects of media on aggression in psychology everything becomes a little more obvious.

There's so many studies to support the idea that media does have a negative effect on mental health, yet still nothing changes? Or there's a '1 step forward, 2 steps back' situation.

We all believe what we're told, repeatedly, because what else is there? We may as well have puppet strings attached to us. There's no need for subliminal messaging to take place, when the messages advertisers want to portray are there- clear as anything. It's not just adverts, it's everywhere. Even in the music that so many of us love and respect.

In the middle of writing this I stopped half way through to watch the new Lady Gaga video- and all I could think was 'My god, I wish I could have her body.' You can guarantee I won't be the only one to have watched the entire thing and take that one message away from it. Whether it's intentional or not, it's there.

There's really no reason for me posting this. It's not my aim to educate or enlighten; because when it comes to something like this we can be aware as we like, it doesn't make it any less real or any less effective. The above article was posted in 1999, it's a subject many have discussed for decades. The only changes that have happened is that the media has even more influence. It's a battle thats looking like it cannot be won.